Aussies certainly love their Netflix, with subscriber numbers steadily climbing since the streaming video behemoth officially launched locally back in 2015. At the time it looked like pay TV incumbent Foxtel would take the brunt of the backlash, but instead free-to-air television continues to pay the price.

Scary times lay ahead for Australia's free-to-air broadcasters unless they can work together to stem the bleeding.

Today more than half of Australian internet users subscribe to at least one Subscription Video on Demand (SVoD) service, according to media analyst firm Ampere Analysis. That includes Netflix, which is streets ahead of the others such as Stan (co-owned by Fairfax Media), Amazon Prime Video, YouTube Red and Foxtel Now.

What's particularly interesting is that, while 51 per cent of Australian internet users subscribe to at least one SVoD service, 35 per cent still have pay TV. Foxtel take up has hovered at around 30 per cent for decades, and clearly hasn't taken a nose dive with the arrival of competing video services which also want your money each month.

Around two thirds of Australian pay TV subscribers also subscribe to at least one SVoD service, basically treating it as another "package" in their monthly entertainment spend.

To be fair these Ampere Analysis figures are for internet users rather than the entire population, but Roy Morgan Research shows a similar trend – with total Foxtel subscriptions only slipping 1 per cent in the last 12 months.

Of course there are only so many hours in the day, so something has to give and it's the amount of time we spend watching traditional television. Australians under 35 have slashed their television-watching hours by around 20 per cent in the last 12 months alone.

Even rusted on older viewers are starting to slip away. In an ominous sign for the free-to-air broadcasters, around half of Australia's Netflix, Stan and Foxtel Now watchers are over 35.

Streaming services are also winning people away from piracy but it's harder to put numbers on that considering that pirates have simply become better at covering their tracks using tricks like VPNs and SOCKS5 proxies.

The writing was on the wall

So why is pay TV faring better in the SVoD age than the free-to-air broadcasters? Because Foxtel heeded the writing on the wall while Freeview stuck its head in the sand.

Partly it's thanks to its exclusive sporting and HBO content, but Foxtel has also spent the last five years managing the transition to contract-free streaming. There's still work to be done as Foxtel Now still lacks some of the channels available to cable/satellite customers.

Unfortunately Foxtel dropped the ball when it comes to lounge room hardware – only supporting a handful of smart TVs and game consoles – and the Foxtel Now box feels like a bit of a rush job to combat the Telstra TV 2 and upcoming Amazon Fire TV.

Meanwhile the free-to-air broadcasters were too busy squabbling amongst themselves to put up a decent fight against Netflix.

Rather than circle the wagons and create a cross-network streaming platform like Hulu, supported on a wide range of devices, instead Australia's free-to-air broadcasters focused their efforts on HbbTV and competing subscription services Stan and the ill-fated Presto.

The latest stats paint a grim picture for Australia's free-to-air broadcasts. How do you spend your entertainment dollar?